Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise on a border question that I had on April 24. I have often asked many border questions. This is in relation to the fact that the Minister of Public Safety is cutting $143 million from the Canada Border Services Agency and our front-line officers are going to be directly impacted.
It costs jobs and Canadian trade when there are slowdowns and reductions in the services at the border. A recent study shows that our border delays are costing us between $15 billion and $30 billion in trade per year with the United States because of the lack of services and support and the new thickening that has taken place on both the Canadian and American side. These were critical cuts because they involved a lot of things, including public safety.
Every intelligence officer in Canada received an affected letter. These officers are important because they analyze and develop the information that helps front-line officers target high risk travellers. That allows goods and services and trade to get over the border rather quickly, and it isolates the high risk people who are detained and processed separately, so they do not bog up the rest of the border. That is critical. Every single one of these officers received a letter of notification. Their roles are absolutely critical to front-line security and they were the hardest hit.
Three hundred and thirty-one border service officer jobs are being cut. This is a fact and is not debatable. How can the minister brag about increasing the staff by 26% while at the same time in one vicious swipe he has reduced that quite significantly and put us backwards from where the Americans want us to go? We have just signed the beyond the borders prosperity act, wherein the United States wants more investment in the border, not less.
In my question I also asked about the dog handlers and the detector dogs that are being cut. They are important as well because they eliminate some of the drugs, contraband and other substances that either exit or enter this country. Organized crime is definitely going to benefit from these cuts. We are going to see more drugs, more pornography, more types of bad material on the streets of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, where it is very heavy. There is no doubt about it, because the border service officers and the intelligence officers who have been cut are very much tied to this process.
When I was on Windsor City Council we brought in the canine program, which is very effective and important for the safety of the general public. Right now, the detector dog program is being sunset. The government is moving some of those dogs to prisons to look for drugs instead of keeping the drugs out of Canada. That is unfortunate because the program should be the front line of our defence.
The Minister of Public Safety and the government are taking reprehensible actions that are going to cost Canadian jobs and money and put more drugs and crime on the streets of Canada.